The Smallest Detail Gives Rise to Insight and Nourishment

     There are people who can turn a system upside down. They are artists really, working on the palette of the American landscape.

     The concept of a free refill at a fast food joint comes to my mind. Here is how it works. The establishment offers a free refill. Only some people take them up on it. The rest are timid and lame for not even taking this simple freedom as their own. However, out on the fringes of fast food artistry, there are consumer artists who take it to a whole new level. They return weeks later with the same cup, and simply request what is theirs: A free refill, only delayed. Possibly months have passed: a new war has started, people have died, a new cancer has begun to fester and then be cured.

    The poet works with the same delayed refill as a starting point. Life is lived and then memory begins to work its games with the mind. The poet, when filling the palette, is essentially asking for a refill of experience. Emotion refilled in tranquility. Take it now, they say. No, the poet says, I will be back in few months. I need to walk my dog. Welcome a new child into the world. Stare at a cloud. Catch a fish. Later, when it is time to ask for the refill, the words are charged with the flavors of time itself.